Local publishing company Footsteps Media and Cleveland Public Theatre are set to release The Mystery of Easter Island, a new fiction podcast launching on May 26th via iTunes and all major platforms.
The story, written by Justin Glanville, was one of four Fiction Podcast finalists at The Austin Film Festival in 2017 and is based on a true story of early 20th century explorer and ethnographer Katherine Routledge.
Routledge had a strong interest in the Easter Island statues and in 1914 set out from England to South America to find out why the statues were built and later toppled.
The podcast was originally recorded in front of a live audience at CPT and then became a Zoom project when COVID-19 hit.
“I was drawn to Routledge’s story after a visit to see the moai for myself a few years ago,” said Glanville. “Here’s this upper crust English woman who sailed around the world to study the most isolated place on the planet – in 1914, before women even had the right to vote. All while battling significant demons of her own.”
The podcast stars a dozen Cleveland area professional actors with original music composition and sound design by Obediya Jones-Darrell, the 2019-2020 CPT Kulas Theatre Composer Fellow.
You can find out more here.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2020.